Lakebed.io

@fire2030 posted that he was starting a newsletter for founders. I replied and he was kind enough to cover Lakebed (and my previous startups) on the DBootstrappers Twitter.

Support is always very much appreciated!

A few months ago Ionos (hosting like Digital Ocean) asked in their newsletter for stories of Covid impact. I'm glad I actually read their marketing email and I submitted the story of Lakebed.

Today, Ionos shared that story on social media:

I recorded a new intro video for the Lakebed website. https://zurl.co/zizT

It no longer uses the computer voice, and in my opinion, does a pretty good job of explaining what a data lake is and the value of the Lakebed application.

Also, based on some feedback from Indie Hackers, I'm working on aligning the text of the website and putting up a pricing page.

I needed to confirm bug fixes so I made a video of Lakebed handling 1,200,000 rows of data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9BURpxeaIY

This is a virtual server with 2GB of RAM and 28gig disc. The entire process took ~5min to upload files and ~3hr of automated processing.

I had a 1:30 Zoom call with Victor and Jansen from 100ml. They do AI/ML consulting and training/teaching. In this Zoom I demo'd the quick & easily installation, population, and data use that Lakebed offers. They were kind enough to confirm, without bias and with a great deal of experience, that:
1.) Nothing like this exists.
2.) There is a market need.
3.) No one is targeting small & medium enterprise.

Initially I had asekd to hire Vic for his feedback but they were kind enough to give me 1:30 of their consult for free in support of Lakebed.

A huge amount of credit goes to @SeanKirby for his landing page rework: http://www.seankirbycopy.com/lakebed-homepage-makeover

I copied that and made a few minor additions for the website. I don't think it's perfect and I'm not sure it'll ever be "done" but this is clearly and incremental improvement.

I got some really valuable feedback (https://www.indiehackers.com/post/when-you-go-fishing-7415201e76) and wanted to quickly act on it. So, I made a 3-minute video going from Excel files and empty data lake to visual data dashboard.

I used Kapwing.com to make the video a .gif so it plays, automatically, on a loop. I'll consider video w/ sound VS .gif and might switch but we'll see.

The Video
https://lakebed.io/in-action/

Finally got around to adding the Lakebed.io to Crunchbase:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lakebed-io

We're also already on Capterra:
https://www.capterra.com/p/199432/Lakebed-io/

If you took a few seconds to support Lakebed.io on either of those platforms I'd be forever greatful.

All the components were already in place from other parts of the app so it was relatively quick & easy to add a contact form. When users are logged in errors show the system administrators name & email but I realized if users are having trouble logging in then they'd have to go hunting for contact information.

Screenshots because I love pictures:

I met a person at his trade show booth with the title "VP Operations". My elevator pitch, in a loud & busy trade show, clearly communicated what Lakebed does and the value. He very keenly gave me his card and asked me to email him (people are pretty protective of their emails these days) and said he'd be likely to pay for what Lakebed does.

Before emailing him I removed the pricing from lakebed.io, based on feedback received here on IH. I'm still unsure of pricing and it doesn't make sense at this early stage to drive a potential customer away if the pricing is too high.